Hi! May went by in a blur. I wrapped up the end of the school year and Hugo and I moved up to San Francisco for the summer.

Wait, don’t you already live in San Francisco?

Nope! I go to school a few hours south of San Francisco in a small town on the coast. I’m excited to be in the city for the summer – I plan to eat my way through the neighborhoods, little by little. Leave me a note if you have any SF recommendations or favorite neighborhoods! (And if you’ve blogged about San Francisco, share the link – I’d love to read it.)

Sometimes, writing these little monthly reviews makes me feel like the most boring person on earth. Remember when I used to traipse around Europe and eat cake? These days, it’s mostly just me reading about machine translation and taking photos of my cat. Does the internet really need more photos of cats?

I think that Hugo’s biggest moment of American culture shock was when he opened a bottle of ibuprofen.

He came running in and exclaimed, “Sweetie! The weirdest thing just happened!” He held out the plastic bottle. “Look what was in it!” Wide-eyed, he pulled out a wad of cotton. “C’est pas comme en France!”

Most teachers know what it feels like to buried under a pile of marking (or what I call “grading”). Once I spent the entire week of Toussaint vacation grading exams, and it took more time than an actual week of teaching. The only bright spot was finding hilarious mistranslations and other mirth-inducing wranglings of the English language.

Highlights

A day in Santa Cruz – Hugo and I drove up to Santa Cruz and spent a lovely day wandering. We left our laptops behind and took the day off from normal life and it was wonderful. It was like a tiny vacation. That sounds silly because it’s less than an hour away, but I thought it was as much fun as wandering through Lisbon or Sète or Oxford. It’s just nice to go somewhere beautiful and explore, no matter how far from home you are.

Last month I told you that I was doing a Whole 30 — some of you have been following along on Instagram where I mini-blogged the experience on a daily basis. The short story is that it didn’t accomplish what I was hoping for, but I’m still glad I did it, and food will never be the same.

Like this:

I can sum up the month of February in two words: school and Whole 30 (not technically a single word, but roll with me). As I predicted, second semester has been a whirlwind so far. I’m taking fewer classes but I started an awesome new job (I get to learn lots of digital tools and play with WordPress) so I am just about as busy as I was before. (So if you sent me a message and I took forever to respond… I’m sorry!)

Like this:

I have lots of little stories about the French words and expressions and nowhere to put them. Okay with you if I micro-blog them?

There’s this funny expression in French – mangerl’heure des poules. It means to eat dinner really early – like “Les américains mangent à l’heure des poules.” (Literally, it means “to eat at the hour of the chickens.” Haha.)

One time we were Skyping with Hugo’s family, including his little two-and-a-half year old nephew. Hugo was telling them that we eat “à l’heure des poules” here and his nephew perked up and said in his tiny little toddler voice, “Elles sont où les poules?!” (Where are the chickens?!) It was pretty cute.(You have to picture a little voice like this.) He seemed disappointed when we explained that it’s just an expression.

(The same nephew taught me the French words for wrench and the little paper top you peel off the yogurt. He’s a smart cookie.)

Hi there! It’s February and GUESS WHAT? I’m doing my first Whole 30 this month. If you haven’t heard of Whole 30, you can read more about it here. Basically, it’s a month-long dietary cleanse where you eliminate sugar, grains, dairy, soy, and lots of other stuff from your diet. After the 30 days are up, you carefully reintroduce these foods to understand how each one affects your body.

I was planning to eliminate gluten and dairy for a month anyway to see if it would help my painful hand eczema, and when I read Anne’s account of her Whole 30, I decided to try it too.

February seemed like a good month to do a Whole 30 cleanse since there are only 28 days. (Kidding – I started on January 31 and plan to end on March 1.)

I’ll let you know how it went at the end of the month (I’m on day 9, so far so good.) I started a new Instagram account to micro-blog the experience – I post about my #Whole30Struggles, what I’m eating and what I WISH I were eating, haha. You can follow along @wherearemycarbs.

Highlights: Friends and nature! Two of my favorite people were in from out of town at the beginning of the month! They are more athletic than I am, so we went hiking at Pinnacles National Park, where I’ve never been before. It was spectacular. But later on I found out that tarantulas live here and had a retroactive panic attack, trying to remember if I had stuck my hands into any holes that could have been spider cottages. (Okay, I’m not totally sure where tarantulas live, but I can’t google it because then photos come up and I have nightmares).